


Hold Me in the After

by JuniorWoofles



Series: Star Wars: Celebration [8]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Force Ghosts, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Married Chirrut Îmwe/Baze Malbus, That's Not How The Force Works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 13:33:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10855026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JuniorWoofles/pseuds/JuniorWoofles
Summary: Five moments in the life of Baze and Chirrut





	Hold Me in the After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrmondSacker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrmondSacker/gifts).



> To OrmondSacker, in return for all of the wonderful spiritassassin you have given me.

1\.    
No matter how hot Jedha was in the day at night the winds came. They were bitter winds but became the excuse they used; initially at least. They were both men of protection and faith and they did not need to form meaningless sentences. They knew that this would lead somewhere, in the end. Someday this would be more.   
But when they were young and foolish they held each other against the sharp night winds and pretended that it was winds that made them shiver.   
Warm arms wrapped around each other, always protecting, even at night. Always a calming presence. Always solid and there. They should have felt the need to speak to each other, to discuss why they lied to each other every night as they lay in the same bunk despite having their own. Why they made pretences at night to deny a truth. But they had never felt the need to use words with each other when actions were more appropriate.  
So wounds were smoothed over by tender fingers. Hair was brushed back from eyes and never commented on. Hands gently squeezed arms and it was reassuring. It was expected. The winds of Jedha never felt cold when the person next to you was warming you from the inside out. The Force was one with them and it sang in joy when they were close. It filled them up with rushes of joy and affection and the outside world felt less hard and hateful when they were cocooned in their shell. 

 

2\.   
They talk about it, eventually. They tried not to for so long but although they could both be stubborn they were also both men of action.   
They came together with a clash of teeth that became a chorus of gentle kisses on every part of skin available as they slowly rocked together: their song becoming one. Kisses were placed on foreheads after, even gentler still and impossibly more loving.   
They didn’t talk that night. Not because they didn’t have to but because in that moment everything was understood between them. They had become one and it was understood between them that this is what they both wanted.  
They fell asleep together, as they did every night, but this was not like the nights previous. This was the start of all of the nights to come, with kisses every so often because they could now.  
They woke up in the morning, sated and warm, feeling a new sense of belonging that always been present but never addressed. They addressed it in that morning, with the sunlight creeping in as they lay together in bed. After the words had been spoken, more for propriety than necessity, they held each other again in new ways. This was the start of their new way but it was the gradual extension of their old ways and felt so natural for them to be together as they were.

 

3\.   
They get married young. It’s a funny affair, they run off one night, sent away on a mission and come back sore and exhausted. They almost fall asleep on the spot but they manage to make it to their bed before they collapse. They are almost too tired to speak but they can squeeze their fingers together and it says ‘goodnight, my love’ as accurately as they could with words.  
They are tired but one thought pops into their minds as they succumb to the pull of exhaustion. This is always where they want to be.  
In the morning they go about their business as usual. They have to report in and go about their day as they always would but at night, when it is their time to just be together, the subject is brought up. It is spoken in a whisper fallen from the lips of the one scared of the answer but the breath between them is closed with a kiss and the worries melt away. There are tears that night as they plan a future together. They were always meant to have a future together, for their is no future if they are not together.   
When the day comes they feel years younger than they are. They are at once ready for this and scared for the days to come. But by the time they are joined together they know that there is no need to be scared again. They will always have each other’s backs. They will always hold hands when they can and kiss each other goodbye. They are set in their ways. Developments are nothing new to them, but the expected continuation of their last step.   
That night they hold their husband for the first time and sleep with the happiest heart they have ever had. 

 

4\.   
Yavin IV is new to them both. War is not.  
They know how this will end. They know that there will be no other way. Even if they live past tomorrow they will be in a war. They will be caught in a war for the rest of their lives. They no longer have a city to protect. They have only each other and the war. For all of their days to come, no matter how many there may be left, they are now tied to the forefront of this war.  
The hold each other desperately. For once they want to speak but cannot. They cannot put into words what they are scared of, what they fear for tomorrow. There is no need to as they are always understood perfectly by the other but all the same they want to try. They want the other to know but the other already does. They both feel the same. They are both scared of losing the other, of one slipping away while the other is helpless.  
Fingers tangle in robes and press into skin, hard and desperate. There’s a silent refusal to let go.   
They fall asleep worried and restless, clinging tight to the one thing they cannot lose. They know war is with its risk, and their mission even more so, but this is something different. Now that it is here and calling for them with the breaking of dawn they are scared to let the other go.  
They go into it the way they have gone into everything that has come before. With their love by their side. Their shoulders are pressed together, or their fingers tangled together, or foreheads rested against each other, but there is constant contact to block out the fear of tomorrow. 

 

5\.   
He takes a deep breath and prays. Then he walks out. He has to do this. He hopes his husband knows that he must. That he is one with the Force and the Force is with them and that they have to do this. They have to make sure the mission succeeds at any cost. If this is the cost then he hopes, he does so hope with all the strength in his heart, that his husband will understand. He is not leaving him. He was leading the rest of them out of the darkness, fulfilling one last holy mission for the Whills.   
It goes as he knew it would. His husband is there. He can hear him and they are both crying. They are dying together as one finishes breathing first. As one leaves the other he is held for as long as they can allow. There is gunfire all around them as their comrades fall too.   
They knew it was coming. All is as the Force wills it. But they’re not ready. They’re still desperately trying to cling to each other but they’re drifting. This will be the last time they hold each other and they know it.  
Even though it kills them, they have to let go.

 

+1.   
The Force had always been strong with them. Chirrut had spent his days praying to the forces of the galaxy and the galaxy had rewarded in kind. Baze would smile, if he could, at the way it had worked out. His husband always did have more faith than anyone else that he had ever met.   
They were one with the Force now, as the Force was one with them. The were one and the same as they drifted away from what they had known. They were past that now. As the beaches of Scarif exploded under the weaponised ray, and their bodies were dissolved, they simply left.   
They were one with the Force now.  
They had no body as such. Their body was the stars all around them, the gases burning stories onto the canvas of the dark night. They were just another story now.   
Chirrut and Baze: the assassin and the monk who had helped defeat the Empire. He was sure they would know their names. Not that he cared. He had never been one for glory and now he was past it.   
Chirrut was all the glory he had ever needed. The smaller man curled up next to him, by his side for all of his nights and all of his days. Baze had never needed anything else.  
He would never need anything else again. He would want for nothing, so long as he had Chirrut now. He had never found faith in the Force the way his husband had. He was like this because of the faith that man had and the love Chirrut had for him.   
If Baze could feel in the state that he was in now he felt Chirrut by him. He knew, if such a thing were possible, that once again his husband was by his side.   
He was content now. He was one with the Force and one with Chirrut and their souls shone like stardust in the after.


End file.
